Iona Institute director David Quinn was on Newstalk’s Pat Kenny show debating assisted suicide with Tom Curran, partner of the late Marie Fleming. Curran is supporting a bill sponsored by Independent TD John Halligan which would legislate for assisted suicide based on the model adopted by the US State of Oregon. He said that when and how to end one’s life should be a personal choice, and distinguished assisted suicide from what he called “irrational suicide”.
Quinn pointed out that in countries like Belgium and the Netherlands that have legalised assisted dying, the grounds on which people are killed have expanded rapidly to include children and people who are not terminally ill. He warned that the line between “rational” and “irrational” suicide would be impossible to draw, and that Irish society couldn’t both applaud Donal Walsh, the teenager who died of cancer but before doing so rose to national prominence for campaigning against suicide, and then turn around and say that suicide is acceptable in some circumstances.
Listen back to the progamme here. (Item begins at 40:25)
